The fear of cyber-attacks has increasingly gripped the organizations lately. In the year 2018, cyber-attacks sky-rocketed, creating difficulties for organizations that struggled to deal with data theft, phishing, and malware attacks. According to Juniper Research, cybercriminals will successfully manage to steal approximately 33 billion records by 2023. The situation is dire and requires extreme measures.
Penetration testing is one way that helps organizations to secure their data. In the age of mounting cyber threats, it is imperative for an organization to use penetration testing as a formidable and viable defense mechanism.
What is penetration testing?
Penetration testing is a simulated cyber-attack carried out against a computer and/or network system in order to determine exploitable vulnerabilities. This helps in understanding existing risks and weaknesses so that a strategy may be devised to mitigate the threats.
An organization utilizes the services of ethical hackers to reproduce actual attacks. This helps in identifying areas of weakness in the organization’s security environment.
How does penetration testing help in ensuring security against cyber-attacks?
Assess an organization’s ability to detect threats
Penetration testing helps organizations in assessing their capability to deal with such threats. Organizations get a chance to inspect the external available infrastructure and applications which can help them to protect against external threats.
Prepare organizations for prompt action
Once the areas of weaknesses are identified, it becomes easy for organizations to devise a security plan and take prompt action against potentially vulnerable attacks. This further helps in securing critical employee and customer data.
Protect an organization’s credibility
As the threat of cyber-attacks looms large, customers are increasingly concerned about their data privacy. They believe that the onus of protecting confidential customer data falls on the shoulders of organizations’ management.
Henceforth, more and more organizations are using penetration testing to win the confidence of their customers and protecting their brand name. It also prevents organizations from getting fined or breach of privacy.
Helps to issue internal guidelines
Penetration testing helps in issuing a set of guidelines for employees to follow in order to avoid a major security breach. For instance, app developers are encouraged to learn how they can employ methods and techniques to develop secure software.
It can also help to fine-tune regulations and see if they are effective for the organization. Finally, penetration testing helps to scrutinize the internal security environment to help protect against insider threat.
Determine budgetary allocation to upgrade security environment
It requires substantial financial investment to guard your organization’s data from cyber-attacks. Many organizations waste a handsome amount of money because they are oblivious to the realities of their security environment. The penetration testing report helps organizations to identify weaknesses and wisely allocate the right amount to upgrade their security environment.
In an era of increased cyber threats, it is essential for an organization to step up their security measures. There is, indeed, no better way than to use penetration testing.
